When the Hyde Park Jazz Festival’s executive and artistic director, Kate Dumbleton, spoke to the Reader in August about the fest’s efforts to adapt to COVID-19, she sounded hopeful that some version of the event would take place during its traditional time slot on the last weekend of September. Given that Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events had already replaced an entire season of live outdoor programming with prerecorded video broadcasts—and that no one knew if, when, and how hard a second wave of COVID infections would hit the city—that hope seemed wildly optimistic....

Led by charismatic vocalist and harmonica player J.D. Wilkes, the Legendary Shack Shakers present an interesting take on the psychobilly theme. Formed in Kentucky and now based in Nashville, this group has been blending roots, country, rock ’n’ roll, and punk for more than two decades. While many of their contemporaries’ styles seem to start and end with the Cramps and the Reverend Horton Heat, the Shack Shakers have a definite prewar-country influence buried underneath their foot stomping, distortion, and punk intensity....

Forty years ago, Steve Askin found himself with a front-row seat for Harold Washington’s quixotic first campaign for the mayoralty of Chicago. At the tender age of 23, Askin was Washington’s deputy press secretary during the all-but-forgotten Democratic primary of the special mayoral election of 1977, which was held to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Mayor Richard J. Daley. When the campaign ended with Washington’s disappointing third-place finish, Askin packed into boxes everything from speeches and press releases he’d written to position papers and newspaper clippings....

The Reader‘s archive is vast and varied, going back to 1971. Every day in Archive Dive, we’ll dig through and bring up some finds. This is quite possibly true. Those amateurs on Yelp don’t know the half of it. Ward opened his front door last year and was confronted with a pile of excrement and a note that said, “Stop writing that shit about restaurants.” . . . Ward thinks people are so excitable about food because “next to one’s private parts, the palate is the dearest thing there is....

During a year when screen time has felt more like a punishment than a reward and the word “viral” has taken on a completely different meaning, one social media platform has stood out from the rest and in many ways defined 2020: TikTok. Its continuing popularity is likely due in part to the creatives who flocked to the app when traditional venues were shuttered in the midst of the pandemic....

For its inaugural production, directed by Emily Daigle, Theatre L’Acadie presents Jeffrey M. Jones’s 1990 jumbled-chronology portrait of a crumbling relationship. On Halloween night, Jess (Brandii Champagne) and Joan (Kaitlin Eve Romero) just want to relax in front of the TV, but keep getting interrupted by trick-or-treaters, ghosts, and monsters. As a voice from the back of the theater calls out scene numbers—sometimes in, sometimes out of sequence—the couple and their seen and imagined tormentors wrestle to determine whether the pair will stay together or split....

Khiltscher/Wikimedia Commons That hat is totally metal. Fleetwood Mac plays Allstate Arena on Valentine’s Day, a shrewd coincidence considering that a lot of the band’s most famous music is about the myopic despair and damaged behavior that ensues after a relationship goes sour. Anyone who still doesn’t “get” Fleetwood Mac likely has them pegged as shallow, wispy soft-rock narcissists. Well, OK, they are shallow, wispy soft-rock narcissists—but they’re also a band that slyly challenged presumptions at every turn, playing metal-disco (“World Turning”), sophisticated folk (“Never Going Back Again”), mystical female blues ballads (“Gold Dust Woman”), punk (“The Ledge”), Beach Boys-style pop (“That’s All for Everyone”), and prog (“Tusk”)....

Even before the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol last week, the desire to get away from this current hellscape was strong in many of us. Cooped up, fed up, scared, confused, and angry, I’ve been veering between doomscrolling and fantasizing about a Yeatsian bucolic escape. Whether “peace comes dropping slow” or pours down like a waterfall, I’ll take it. (BRB: looking up YouTube tutorials on how to make a cabin from clay and wattles....

Street View is a fashion series in which Isa Giallorenzo spotlights some of the coolest styles seen in Chicago. Every day for the past two years, Abigail Glaum-Lathbury has worn one of six versions of the same jumpsuit. A professor of fashion design at the School of the Art Institute, Glaum-Lathbury created the outfit with Los Angeles-based visual artist Maura Brewer to “explore the possibility of a universal garment that could be worn in any situation,” she says....

It has been a bad month for apologies from MAGA, as no one is as bad at apologies as MAGA. Last week, I analyzed the so-called apology of Congresswoman Mary Miller, a newly elected Republican from the 15th district in downstate Illinois. She got into hot water for uttering the three words that even a MAGA person should know enough not to say . . . As a lefty with Libertarian impulses, I support Catanzara’s right to hold that sign....

Finding a good selection of clothes that not only fit but tell a style story is a challenge for most plus-size people. While mass-market retailers like Target and Macy’s have a much better selection in extended sizes than they did just 20 years ago, some of us want to be able to find unique pieces and not just settle for whatever fits from the clearance rack. And finding vintage clothing in sizes larger than 14 or XL can seem completely impossible, as though each and every plus-size item that was originally sold pre-1995 was zapped from the earth....

When New Orleans band Tank & the Bangas invited their friends and family to help them cover Hal David and Burt Bacharach’s pop classic “What the World Needs Now Is Love” in January, they embraced the song’s earnest call for kindness, sprinkled in spoken word urging people to come together in peace, and wrapped up with an a cappella solo from Harmony Ball (the young niece of lead singer Tarriona “Tank” Ball), whose childlike sincerity could stir up hope in the bleakest pessimist....

By John Greenfield The “masters mechanics” program at Blackstone Bicycle Works aims to build community. By Sebastián Hidalgo Yes, I occasionally wear them. But they take the joy out of riding. By Maya Dukmasova The city’s system can’t be beat—too bad the bikes are so ugly. By Ryan Smith A 20-mile ride takes you to plenty of refreshment—and you can take the train back. By Julia Thiel By Daniel de Vise

Developed by the Minneapolis-based creative duo of Olive Bieringa and Otto Ramstad, Closer is like nothing so much as an interesting but sometimes awkward first date. The idea is this: an audience and dancer come together for a one-on-one performance in a public setting—a nearby park, a municipal building, an abandoned industrial plant. You could just as easily wind up watching someone tumble across a grassy knoll as dangle from the wrought-iron beams of an old factory building....

Corinne J. Kawecki’s 90-minute one act, receiving its Chicago premiere at Pride Films and Plays, concerns Julia, a woman in her 50s whose life seems to be unraveling. She hates her job working as an escort. Her current girlfriend is unfaithful. Her ex, with whom she’s still living, is throwing her out. To top it off, she is being bedeviled by voices that mock and tease her. At first, we empathize with Julia, but after a while it’s hard not to get a little frustrated with a directionless character who careens from one minor disaster of her own making to another....

The happy paradox of the Hyde Park Jazz Festival is that while it was instituted to celebrate the jazz legacy of Chicago’s south side, its programming puts it on par with great jazz festivals around the globe. It commissions new projects from rising local musicians. This year one of those works is Requiem for Jazz by Angel Bat Dawid, a 12-part multimedia jazz funeral that responds to the 1959 film The Cry of Jazz by Chicago-born filmmaker Edward Bland and draws on the tradition of hush harbors (secret religious services where slaves practiced their own rituals); another is The Story of 400 Years, a sonic narrative of African American history by Isaiah Collier & the Chosen Few....

Trying to convince the public that two white men who’ve sold millions of records and run their own music festival are at the bottom of the totem pole is a challenge, but Steve Miller—author of Detroit Rock City and the new Juggalo—is up for it. ICP have a few things going for them—not least that they’re both straight white men, which confers all sorts of advantages—but in fairness, they’ve had to overcome some big hurdles....

Typically constructed on a trailer with wheels instead of a foundation, tiny houses are part of a growing movement in which people seek to live simply in small quarters (around 500 square feet or less). Tucked into a grove of trees at the edge of Alex’s parents’ property in Elgin, the tiny, portable house is parked adjacent to a chicken coop and not far from a small gardening shed. From a distance, it almost looks as if it’s part of some kind of tiny village....

Viggo Mortensen in Jauja Lisandro Alonso’s Jauja—which plays again at the Siskel Center tonight and tomorrow—should be seen on a big screen or not at all. Crucial scenes of this art house spectacle transpire in extreme long-shot, the actors presented as mere dots on the Patagonian Desert landscapes where the action unfolds. On a TV or computer screen, you can hardly make out the human figures during such moments, which might lead you to believe that nothing’s happening in the shots....

Jesse Teverbaugh Paige Wynne Chicagoans is a first-person account from off the beaten track, as told to Anne Ford. This week’s Chicagoan is Jesse Teverbaugh, director of student and alumni affairs, The Cara Program. “I had a history of substance abuse, and I knew firsthand what could make this pain go away. I consciously went out and started drinking. That led to me losing my job. Next thing I knew, it was two years later and I had lost everything....